Justice Not Served: Inmate Buses Grounded by Correction Officers

All day Monday, Jose Camillo sat in the criminal courthouse on Staten Island waiting for his 17-year-old son, Joseph, to go before a judge. Late in the day, he heard why Joseph had not appeared: The correction officers had refused to leave Rikers Island with the people who were due in court.

“We heard that there was a union action because the buses were unsafe,” Mr. Camillo said, “that the drivers were proving a point that they didn’t want to risk prisoners’ lives.”

A carpenter for the city and a union member, Mr. Camillo said he believed it would have been a principled reason for the action.

“But it wasn’t about that,” Mr. Camillo said. “It was a ruse.”

In fact, on Monday morning, the correction officers brought the criminal justice system in the city to a near halt.

The inmate has yet to get on the witness stand and give the first syllable of testimony.

As it happens, the officers on trial in the Bronx were members of the transportation group at Rikers, the corps of officers who deliver detainees from the city jails to the courthouses.

That morning, their fellow transportation officers reported that not a single bus in the jailhouse fleet of about 60 was working properly. Many of the buses had been bought within the last year or two, and most were no more than five years old. They all have regular maintenance schedules.

After the buses were checked out by mechanics and cleared to go back on the road, the drivers reported still other problems.

The same thing happened on Tuesday morning. The judge hearing evidence at the trial of the correction officers adjourned the case for two weeks. The buses started rolling again.

Mr. Camillo was aghast.

“They were trying to prevent someone from testifying against them,” he said.

It certainly looks that way, although Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Thursday that he was not sure if it had been an effort to intimidate the witness.

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He promised to bring disciplinary action against the officers involved in the bus shutdown, and said he would seek a court order against the union representing the correction officers. He blamed its president, Norman Seabrook, for ordering the action. The union leader had denied people their right to a day in court, the mayor said, and squandered public resources for two days.

Mr. Seabrook, the only union leader to support Mr. Bloomberg during his 2001 campaign and a member of the transition committee after that election, did not respond to a request for comment on the angry words from his former ally.

The Legal Aid Society, which represents most indigent people in criminal court, is considering bringing a suit against the city, said Steve Banks, the chief attorney for the organization.

“There are heartbreaking stories of clients who would have been released, who suffered real harm,” Mr. Banks said.

An 18-year-old Brooklyn man who was arrested last week for assaulting his sister in a fight was due in court to plead guilty to disorderly conduct and go home, said Lucy Stroup, a lawyer with Legal Aid. “His mother was in court all day waiting,” she said.

Another man who missed a court date was a 19-year-old from Queens with schizophrenia, who has had about a dozen hospitalizations for his illness, said John Kalinowski, his Legal Aid lawyer. The man would have been released to a hospital.

For Jose Camillo, there was a special anxiety attached to the long wait for his son. Joseph, he said, had developed a serious pill habit a few years ago, began shoplifting and was recently committing burglaries while people were asleep. Mr. Camillo said he had been trying, without success, to get his son into a drug-treatment program. Then Joseph was arrested.

“It’s actually the best thing that could happen to him,” Mr. Camillo said. “He was mandated to go for treatment.”

On his court date, he was to plead guilty to the felonies, and then be driven by his father to a residential treatment program near Albany. If he completed it successfully and stayed sober, his record would be cleaned. Such slots can vanish if they are not claimed. Mr. Camillo fretted that Joseph had lost a chance to reclaim his life.

Late on Tuesday, Joseph got to court, and Mr. Camillo drove his son three hours to the program.

“I hadn’t felt as close to him in a long time,” he said. As for the shutdown of the buses, Mr. Camillo had one word: “Horrific.”

Email: dwyer@nytimes.com

Twitter: @jimdwyernyt

A version of this article appears in print on November 22, 2013, on Page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Justice Not Served: Inmate Buses Grounded by Correction Officers. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe